Make Like A Baby and Head Out

Make Like a Baby And Head Out

Another one of Hemingway’s stories that stood out to me was “Indian Camp”. The first thing that I found interesting was how Hemingway juxtaposed a boy trying to grow up with the regression of a boy back in to childhood. It’s the story of a boy who goes to an Indian camp with his father and Uncle George.  When they get there they enter into a shanty in which a woman in labor awaits them. It’s interesting to see how Nick’s father initially treats him like an imbecile when he tells Nick, “This lady is going to have a baby, Nick”. Nick responds, “I know,” but his father tells him that he doesn’t know. With out anesthetic, the father has to perform a rather gruesome caesarian section on the woman, while the husband lies in the top bunk having to bear listening to his wife’s screams. After the C-section, Nick’s father brags about having performed it with only a jackknife and fishing line, and he is proud of that, which I found quite alarming, especially my future career, hopefully being a doctor, I know that I would not want to perform such an operation, nor would I be necessarily proud of such a thing. Unlike Nick, I’ve never experienced such a scaring event. Yes, I’ve been in the operating room for several C-sections when I was shadowing an Anesthesiologist, and I must say that it I had a much more pleasant experience.

Probably the thing that bothered me the most was Nick’s dad’s reaction to the man committing suicide. Among several things said, his father says that dying is rather easy. Since I have yet to die, I cannot comment has to whether or not he makes a valid statement, however I do know that a dying, rather suicide in this instance, may seem like the easy way out, especially for an Indian father who probably realizes that he cannot give his child a good life. But in the long term, what seemed like the answer actually hurts those closest to the person. That child will live a fatherless and lacking life.

Like I mentioned earlier, there is a regression of Nick from a young man back to a boy, and this is shown when he addresses his father as “daddy” and his father calls him “Nickie”.